Discoveries
by Ravita20
Summary: Based on the 1999 Mansfield Park movie. Fanny discovers the affair and perhaps a bit more.


Discoveries

Description: Based on the 1999 Mansfield Park movie. Fanny discovers the affair and perhaps a bit more.

Characters: Henry Crawford, Maria Rushworth (neé Bertram), Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram, Tom Bertram (mentioned)

Henry Crawford was a shell.

He could not feel.

Nothingness.

Emptiness.

The words epitomized his being.

But that was not entirely true. He could hear the gasps filling the room. He could see the burgundy tapestries and bedsheets that enveloped him. He could see a body beneath him and feel the perspiration that dripped down his forehead. He could feel himself moving in and out of her, driving into her with a frenzied passion that he himself could not explain.

But he was numb, immune to it all. He could not recall the last time he had truly felt something since the moment, that one horrible moment, he had been refused the only treasure he had truly and desperately desired. Those fleeting moments where he had genuinely _lived_ thinking he had her, that maybe he had succeeded, had somehow managed to occupy a small place in Fanny Price's heart - he could not even remember what that had felt like. All he knew now is that he was moving and that he was trying to attain something that was perpetually out of his grasp.

"Henry!" A voice beneath him croaked his name. His wild eyes briefly swept across the sweaty figure of Mrs. Maria Rushworth beneath him for just a moment before once again becoming unfocused.

Maria tried to smile but found she could not. Henry was never this quiet before, this intense. He had always been a passionate and consummate lover but this side to him, she had never seen. It was raw. It was animalistic. It was anguished. Something had infiltrated this man's very soul. A soul that she had never thought could have such feeling.

Henry Crawford had become a shade of the once captivating young man he had been. She had known it when she had seen him earlier that evening when he told her of his rejection at the hands of that little mouse, Fanny.

She had been momentarily struck by spiteful glee to see the man who had rebuffed her for another woman brought down so low. In another instant, she was struck by how changed he had become in the short months they had not seen each other. She could feel the waves of pain coming off him, that desperate need to _escape_ , and it echoed Maria's desires to free of herself from the shackles of her marriage to that fool Rushworth.

They had sought to console themselves and each other in their old game. Two glasses of sherry turned to four and with every subsequent glass, the anguish ebbed away bit by bit until there was only that burning need to achieve some measure of freedom again.

Maria's mind had been blissfully clouded and waves of pleasure from their activity had her in a state of near nirvana until her lover moaned a name that was not her own as he slipped inside her. He did not even look at her as they made love, only looking down between them. Clarity finally penetrated her alcohol-induced haze and she felt as if she had been doused in cold water. Henry was imagining, wishing – no, _begging_ – for another woman to be in her place.

"Please…" she whispered. _Come back to me._ She did not vocalize her plea, instead looking away. Despair and immense regret filled her and she made a firm promise to herself that such a dalliance would never again occur. _What have I done?_

Henry's pounding rhythm became punishing in an instant and she twisted away from him, unwilling to view his torment any longer and wishing for a swift ending.

 _Oh heavens, no._

Fanny Price was a fool.

For many reasons, she was a fool but at this particular moment, she felt her own foolishness more acutely as she dropped her candlestick and then stumbled around in the dark, trying to find her way.

Her earlier encounter with Sir Bertram seemed to have robbed her of any of the remaining good sense she had mistakenly thought she possessed. She had been too plagued by the horrible scenes depicted in that cursed book of his to fall asleep and had long given up any hope of slumber. Groaning and the shattering of glass could be heard from Tom's room all the way up to her attic room and pangs of despair for Tom and sympathy for Edmund tore through her.

Well, if she could not sleep, maybe she could help Edmund do so. With renewed purpose, she had grasped her candlestick and made her way to Tom's room to relieve Edmund of his vigil until by a mixture of her clumsiness and what she now knew to be her own foolishness, she had lost her candlestick.

Fanny could see a beam of light through a room to her left and concluded that it must have been Tom's room. In her harried and fatigued state, no one would blame her for such a simple confusion and by Jove, not a soul could have foreseen the scene that she witnessed instead of Tom's sick bed.

It was her small shuddering gasp that brought him to his senses. He looked away from the connection between him and the body beneath him to see the woman he had been imagining as his bed companion instead standing at the opened door.

Dear sweet Fanny Price's eyes were wide and horror-struck, her hand at her mouth to stifle her shock. A thin shawl was wrapped around her shoulders and she was the picture of innocence in her white nightdress, her hair falling in messy curls to frame her pale face. Under different circumstances, Henry would have both appreciated and teased her state of undress. However, considering his current activity, he knew he was the one at the disadvantage.

With her appearance, emotions flooded through the gate he thought had been permanently locked. Anger for her rejection, baleful spite for the scene she had walked in on, despair for that she was not the one beneath him, misguided hope that she had come to offer herself and irrational hostility when he realized that any hope of that was pathetic.

As suddenly as she had appeared, she fled and Henry's next movements were both swift and mechanical as he abandoned his lover's bed without a second thought and went to the door, searching for her in the darkness.

Maria was in a daze as she heard Henry whispering for Fanny. He could mask neither the frenzied desperation nor the pure adoration of the name's recital in his tone. She wrapped the bedsheets around her like a shield, trying to protect herself from the sudden influx of shame and humiliation that was hitting her.

Fanny was shaking as she moved without any real sense of purpose. It dawned her that this time she had entered the right room and she saw Edmund, her dear darling Edmund, with his face in his hands, sitting at the foot of a sleeping Tom's bed.

Edmund looked up as she approached, fondness and appreciation for her warming his heart. However, upon seeing her pale stricken features, immediate concern and the need to protect her rushed forth. Without thinking, he placed his hands on her shoulders, trying to simultaneously offer comfort and defend her from whatever plagued her.

Her eyes filled with tears, Fanny was at a loss for words as she helplessly gestured towards the room on the other side of the corridor, Maria's room. Edmund's brows snapped together in confusion and he strode towards the room, inexplicably angry that his sister had made a usually composed Fanny this distraught.

He did not expect the sight of Henry Crawford in breeches and nothing else, whispering Fanny's name in the dark. Impulsively, Edmund glared at Crawford, mistakenly assuming he had dared to proposition Fanny in the dead of night despite her refusal to his suit.

Realization then dawned on him that Crawford was in front of Maria's room and dread filled his heart. Surely, they could not have been that terrible, that wicked to commit such debauchery under his father's roof. Of course, he had discounted the debacle that had been Lover's Vows.

He pushed past Crawford into his sister's room. The room reeked of alcohol and musk and the huddled, disheveled and sheet-cloaked form of the usually pristine Maria Rushworth told him all he needed to know about what had transpired only a few moments before.

His sister's distraught justification of being trapped to a fool of a husband fell on deaf ears. The words to describe the revulsion and anger he felt at this adulterous affair escaped him but the fact that his sweet innocent Fanny had witnessed it as well sickened him to his core.

Edmund left the scene of the crime with one last glare at Crawford who had resumed his usual impassioned air and was looking at him through glassy emotionless eyes. Disgust welled up in him as he pushed past the man and re-entered his brother's room.

Fanny's pacing figure dispelled whatever remaining negative feelings of the adultery had inspired and the desire to comfort alone burned. After all, Crawford had proposed to Fanny only a short while ago and while Fanny had - quite rightly in his opinion - declined, he knew her initial feelings for him had since changed to a small affection. To see him in such a position with Maria must have both shocked and hurt her. Though usually a levelheaded and non-violent man, Edmund would have gladly dueled Henry Crawford in that very moment because of how Fanny had been affected.

He took her in his arms and forced her to sit next to him. Slowly, he wiped away the fallen tears from her soft cheeks. Soft. Kind. Gentle. Caring. Intelligent. Beautiful. That was his Fanny as she had always been, from the moment he had met her when they were younger. He had loved her as a cousin, as a playmate, as a companion, as his best friend. He had loved the young girl she had been and now loved the woman she had become.

The feelings of pure unadulterated adoration for the woman before him were too much and there was a change in the atmosphere between the two from the simple comfort of two friends to a more charged and passionate embrace. They leaned towards each other as if drawn together, like a moth to ia flame. Their lips were only seconds away from meeting.

Henry had thought he had attained the highest pain threshold when Fanny had refused him but no, he had been wrong as he oft seemed to be these days. He had also been wrong in thinking he might have had even the smallest of occupancies in Fanny Price's heart. No, there was only a single tenant in that heart and she was already in the arms of that man.

Witnessing the embrace between Edmund Bertram and his Fanny, Henry realized, was the most painful moment of his life. But there was no one to blame but himself, he knew. Whatever chance he had once had was destroyed the moment he had allowed himself to lose and went to seek comfort in someone else's embrace like a coward. And that was exactly what he had been and now would always be, having lost his beloved.

Edmund pulled away suddenly and mumbled an apology to Fanny. Bewildered by his passionate feelings, he breathed slowly and tried to settle his racing heart. Fanny sighed, a mixture of disappointment with a ray of hope echoing in her heart. Of all the confusing and shocking moments she had discovered in the last few hours, she was certain of one fact – Edmund had feelings for her.

Fanny would patiently wait as she had always done for years for him to admit it to himself and to her. She was a fool, she knew, for perhaps he might never do so. But if it was one thing she knew for sure was that Fanny Price was a fool - particularly for love.


End file.
